Film and TV Reviews

Right ok, anyone here need a shock blanket? Because that was an emotional roller-coaster and a half.

Before I get onto the major revelations of the episode, I’d like to refer to my post last week (click here to read), which spoke about how I think the series would progress with the lack of Mary. Well this week we discovered that we didn’t really have to adjust without her, she is still there in John’s consciousness, so John and Sherlock’s dynamic didn’t change after all, as her presence still resonates within the storyline.

Una Stubbs is a badass bitch. Drifting an Aston Martin around the suburbs on a police chase with a smack head in the boot? What an absolute legend.

Did anyone else get major Jimmy Saville vibes from Culverton Smith (Toby Jones). I don’t want to appear insensitive, but that is all I could think of when watching him; a creepy man well known to the media, supposedly charitable and kind, sneaking around a hospital carrying out repulsive, evil deeds. I couldn’t help but draw a parallel. Excellently acted I might add, he really makes your skin crawl!

It’s time to talk about Euros. Greek for ‘the east wind’, which fans will know from Mycroft’s scary childhood story he used to tell Sherlock; ‘the east wind is coming to get you’. Well, I can feel a gale blowing. A lot of us had deduced that the mysterious Sherrinford would be revealed to be the third Holmes brother. Quite similar to Sherlock’s miscalculation in A Study In Pink, where he predicted that John had an alcoholic brother, which turned out to be Harriet, his sister. It is amazing how one actress can disguise herself to be 3 characters, and leave the audience completely fooled. Once again Sherlock is correct, the art of disguise is being able to hide in plain sight. So if this is Sherlock’s sister, why didn’t he recognise her when he met her in his flat disguised as Faith Smith, or when she was disguised as the therapist?! Can we deduce that Sherlock has never met his sister?

But most importantly, THE HUG. Oh my God. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss really know how to get their fans right in the feels. I think this is as close as we will get to Johnlock, but that’s good enough for me. Plus Sherlock might be sliding into Irene Adler’s DM’s so watch this space. But still, the position they hugged in was identical to a famous photo-shopped piece of fan-art! (See below). I swear that they get most of their ideas from Tumblr.

John was right, Sherlock really is the most human, human-being he has ever met. It wasn’t a mind blowing case once again, so if you are after the case heavy stuff then you may have been disappointed, plus it was really trippy to echo Sherlock’s drug induced mind. If you aren’t a hard-core fan, I can imagine a lot of the elements and details would be wasted on you, making it quite confusing. But this whole episode was one big character development fest. Sherlock has come so far from the ignorant ‘cock’ he has always been, to a really sensitive man that we can all seem to empathise with. Plus scruffy, stubble Sherlock, my guilty pleasure.

Now let’s all recover and then lose our minds again in a weeks time in ‘The Final Problem’.